California Highway Patrol arrests for driving under the influence spiked dramatically during the 2017 holiday season compared to 2016.

California Highway Patrol arrests for driving under the influence spiked dramatically during the 2017 holiday season compared to 2016.

Photo: California Highway Patrol

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Human decency and logic are not enough to motivate some people from driving under the influence of intoxicants, so states impose various penalties on people cited for DUI as a punishment and, hopefully, a deterrent.
Some states don't impose jail time until the second offense, while fines for the first offense range from $0 to $1,500.
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Human decency and logic are not enough to motivate some people from driving under the influence of intoxicants, so states impose various penalties on people cited for DUI as a punishment and, hopefully, a ... more

California Highway Patrol arrests for driving under the influence spiked dramatically during the 2017 holiday season compared to 2016. More people were arrested in California for DUIs over the Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends this year, and the trend continued over New Year’s weekend.

Statewide, the CHP arrested 936 people for allegedly driving under the influence between the evening of Dec. 29 and Jan. 1. That was a 22 percent increase over last year during that same period, when the CHP arrested 767 people.

The CHP’s Golden Gate Division, which serves the Bay Area, arrested 157 people for allegedly driving under the influence, nearly double the number in 2016.

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“Any time you see a rise it’s concerning, especially when we look at fatalities, because that’s somebody’s loved one,” said CHP Officer John Fransen. “But the sheer number of arrests that are made, to see roughly 1,000 people arrested in every single maximum enforcement period, it’s disheartening.”

The increase was a statewide pattern throughout the holiday season. Over Thanksgiving weekend, the CHP arrested 1,057 people for DUIs, compared with 902 in 2016. Over Christmas weekend, the CHP made 917 DUI arrests, compared with 621 in 2016.

The numbers represent only drivers ticketed by the CHP and do not include citations issued by local law enforcement agencies.

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“I would just be guessing,” Fransen said when asked for reasons behind the increase. “It’s not necessarily that there are more officers, because any time there’s a maximum enforcement period, any available officers are on the road. It could be that more people are choosing to get behind the wheel of a vehicle and think that they can drive after they’ve had a few too many drinks.”

Fransen said it’s too early to say whether those arrested were under the influence of alcohol, drugs or both.

“A lot of these are pending investigation,” Fransen said.

There were 23 fatalities statewide due to traffic collisions on roads patrolled by the CHP over New Year’s weekend in 2017; last year there were 14 deaths over the same period.

Over the Christmas maximum enforcement period, 16 people died — a decrease from last year, when 23 people lost their lives. One of the crashes in 2017 killed a CHP officer, Andrew Camilleri, after a driver crashed into him at a high speed on an on-ramp to Interstate 880 in Hayward Christmas Eve. The driver, Mohammed Abraar Ali, was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder as well as driving under the influence of alcohol and marijuana.

The CHP and the California Office of Traffic Safety are embarking on a public information campaign to educate the public on driving under the influence of drugs, as recreational marijuana use becomes legal in California.

From 2005 to 2015, the proportion of drivers in fatal collisions who had an impairing drug other than alcohol in their system increased from 26.2 percent to 42.6 percent, according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

“I think our biggest concern as we look at the statistics on other states that have legalized recreational marijuana, it seems like there’s a sharp increase in DUI-related traffic collisions and fatalities,” Fransen said. “We’re concerned because obviously we don’t want to see California follow that strong trend.”